Day 124: Southwards to Bohol

After a very interrupted night's sleep, Shandos made it up and out the door in time for her 6:30 meeting at an airport hotel. I dozed for another couple of hours, but eventually got up and had my traditional Jollibee's breakfast before heading for the airport.

Despite being the main airport for a huge capital city and a regional hub, terminal 4 at Manila Airport (the domestic and low-cost carrier terminal) is basically a shack, where I spent a couple of hours killing time until my flight. I had arrived very early because Manila traffic as we've discovered this week is among the worst in the world, and no matter how long you think you need for a road journey - it's not long enough. Except today, anyway.

My flight was uneventful, and after an hour and fifteen minutes we touched down in Tagbilaran City on the island of Bohol. I'd booked a hotel at a place called Alona Beach, technically on a separate island from Bohol called Panglao, though the islands are only 100m or so apart and connected via several bridges. Negotiated a van fare to my hotel which left shortly afterwards with just one passenger - me! Go figure.

The hotel drive was about 40 minutes mostly through countryside - Bohol is far less built up than Boracay or any other islands we'd visited so far. My hotel seems nice enough, about 5 minutes walk from the beach and pretty handy to shops, restaurants and so on. Though I had to move rooms within half an hour of arriving, as the air conditioner in my original room wasn't working, and I got covered in ants within a few minutes of sitting down on the bed.

No such problems in the next room, though I was now out of range of the wifi unfortunately. It wasn't supposed to work in the rooms (I was lucky and could get signal in the first room), but oh well. It'll be good for getting me out of the room and doing stuff! I went for a brief explore and had a burger overlooking the beach as a late lunch (it was now getting on for 3pm). Sated, I went back and changed into my swimmers before heading to the beach.

Spent the next few hours at the beach until it was nearly dark, before I went back to the hotel and had a quick dip in the pool there as well. Relaxed in my room and then ducked out for a small dinner as I wasn't very hungry - a couple of pizza slices and some iced tea! Day 1 of flying solo had been passed with flying colours!Read more